


when we speak softly, we can leave the world behind

by obsolete_ocelot



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coping, Exposition, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-27 02:04:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14415279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsolete_ocelot/pseuds/obsolete_ocelot
Summary: all he could say was that he was lonelyJack Zimmermann pre-canon fic





	when we speak softly, we can leave the world behind

**Author's Note:**

> I'm more of a drabble fanfic writer, but I fell really hard for Jack and I wanted more of his story. So here I am, writing a multi-chapter work with little planning. I have the first year Jack's in college sketched out, but it needs more work, so I wanted to get something out to motivate myself. So here's a prologue!

_Summer of 2011, Montreal, Quebec_

 

Jack and sleep were uncomfortable bedfellows. Most nights were a struggle that left him almost as tired as when he turned off the lights. At night, he was intimately acquainted with the tide like properties of passing time, ebbing and flowing to uncover warped and uncanny dreams by morning. This night, with the end of summer on its breath, he didn’t want to fight. Instead of crawling into his bed, he crawled out through his window and onto the roof of the porch. He knew from past experience that if he sat to the far left, he might be able to make out the ink of the river amidst the scattered lights of the city. Tonight Jack wanted to lose himself slowly, purposefully. He wanted to become unmoored in the past few years before leaving it behind. He stretched out and stared up at the stars, somewhat dimmed from the city and waited for them to flicker.

Thoughts drifted forward,

were acknowledged,

and allowed to dissipate like the fog of each exhalation.

 

The insomnia and anxiety came around the same time as puberty. They hid behind the sweat and feelings and a body that grew so quickly it barely remembered what it was supposed to do and only then from years of ingrained muscle memory. By the time he was 16, he’d stretched his awkward baby fat and nerves into 185 cm of muscles and social anxiety. He felt like rubber bands drawn taut and constantly on the brink of tearing. And as soon as he thought everything had stabilized, one of the bastards would snap, rippling into every aspect of his life.

Stress exacerbated it, that was pretty elementary. But even when he wasn’t being put under pressure on the rink, he had to contend with what was going on in his head. He could rarely sleep the entire night through. The doctors said working out and a routine helped, if he didn’t want to medicate. And his parents didn’t want that, not so young, maybe later. So he relied on hockey and the bone deep fatigue that came with it. And in the off season, he picked up cross country running. A technology curfew was placed on the house. No television before bed, no computers or screens. No video games, only books that weren’t overly exciting. He got really into biographies.

And then Juniors happened. And of course he made it in. He’d been skating since he was three, he lived and breathed hockey, he was Bad Bob Zimmerman’s son. He wouldn’t let himself be anything less than the best. And when he was in the thick of it, with Kent at his side and the world for the taking, being the best was the only way forward. Games, win or lose, began to chip away at him. Each success a mounting pressure to perform, each loss evidence that even his best wasn’t good enough. They tried to patch him up. He tried to hide it. It wouldn’t go away. He could feel it happening, could feel himself losing control. Safety mechanisms failed too many times. He failed.

He didn’t account for how awful the traveling would wreck his routine or the warping effect the spotlight could have on him or the fact that no matter how responsible he was, at the end of the day he was lonely and just wanted to have friends who liked him for who he was. Not that he knew who he was. Who knew who they were at sixteen? If it hadn’t had such a hellish ending, he’d laugh at the thought.

_Christ_ , he pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes until light bloomed in the dark, _he wanted to live long enough to laugh at his younger self_.

 

It didn’t happen all at once. It didn’t have a single driving force. It was everything and it was too much and he broke. Jack’s memories and associations were all tangled up. _The mind will grab at anything in the vicinity and tie it to trauma_ , his therapist had said. He once began a list.

**Things that made his stomach twist in dread** :

the taste of licorice

that one song sample

the flash of a sign, 80 km to Toronto

 

**Things that made him search for a quiet place to breath** :

lighting that flickers just so

the press of a crowd

a phrase once whispered in his ear

 

**Things that made it difficult to speak** :

the smell of musty leather

mistaking someone’s laugh for Kent’s

the rasp of skates against ice

 

For a time - after the draft - after the hospital - after Jack’s shame gave way to anger gave way to thinking about how he was so irreversible broken that he shouldn’t even be allowed to try again - he was panicking that he wouldn’t be able to untangle hockey and Kent Parsons and the incident from one another.

At one time, Jack desperately held onto the belief that he understood people better if they were side by side on the ice. His therapist thought it might have something to do with how he coped with his social anxiety and distanced himself from people. That if he only thought of people as archetypes, he would always struggle when they revealed that were in fact human. Jack thought it was from all of the wartime memoirs he’d read.

If he were being honest though, he still held onto that belief.

On the ice, his father was a force reigned in by charm, just as likely to drop his gloves as he was to lead a play. Jack remembered his patience as much as his discipline. There wasn’t a time that his father _let_ him win. Jack always had to fight for it. Always fighting to prove his worth.

Kent Parson, well, he was skilled at distraction, always looking for weaknesses in others, bluffing to cover any vulnerability he felt. When he attacked, there was rarely any hesitation.

_And what about you, what are you like on the ice Jack,_ his therapist had asked.

That wasn’t how it worked. When Jack wasn’t playing hockey, he didn’t feel completely himself. On the ice, he was confident, strategic, a force to be reckoned with, inspiring. It was when he let anything else in, everything not the battle at hand, that he failed. Off the ice, he wasn’t _anything_.

But with Kent - Jack remembered that feeling of _synchronicity_ during their first scrimmage. Jack’s strategy and energy coupled with Kent’s intuition and recklessness. They were raw nerves ready to fire, on and off the ice. At parties, on the road, in clubs, in their rooms late at night - Off the ice Kent made Jack feel like he did in the heat of the game. Together, they were unstoppable. And if Kent could do that for him, maybe it was Jack’s fault that Kent couldn’t trust him enough to let him in.

Sometimes, Jack had moments of clarity. It took Jack exactly up to the draft to accept that no matter how long he was around, Kent would never let him in. When you’re with someone who views you as their weakness, as something to keep hidden, it’s difficult to see it going anywhere. And Jack had picked up a few things from his partner. When Kent hesitated, it was one of the few times Jack was able to beat him to the drop. He broke it off before Kent could. He ignored the texts, blocked his calls, put it behind him, and began the process of putting himself back together.

It took two years, forty or so kids, and routine therapy before he could say that he loved the game and that’s what really mattered to him. Not some pretty boy with a mouth that could have built him up but bled him dry instead, not how everyone in the league only saw him as a watermark of his father. Nothing else mattered but the ice and the battle to be fought. Or at least that’s what he managed to think on his good days.

He’d started reading his history books again. He’d joined a trail running club. He’d even tried talking to his father once, about everything. He couldn’t really get much out, but when he started crying his father hugged him, awkwardly patting him on the back. Jack had even put a plan into place for how he could get back on track for the NHL. Since he’d moved back in with his parents, he’d gotten into a steady routine again and his therapist thought he was ready to taper off of his medication.

Now he just had to worry about freshman year.


End file.
